At 100, Virginia Man Has Seen a Lot of Printing

SOUTH BOSTON, VA—For the staff at the ProForma franchise here (formerly Creative Ink), it’s always a special event when Carroll Headspeth comes into the shop. It isn’t just because Headspeth has been a steady customer for 10 years. What makes Headspeth’s visits special is that, at age 100, he is a living link to printing’s—and Virginia’s—glorious past.

Born in 1897, Headspeth has been a printer, linotype operator, reporter and store owner.

Headspeth’s career began in a small newspaper office started by his grandfather, R. Hunter Beazley, a preacher, lecturer and Confederate veteran who opened the South Boston News in 1879. He remembers the first car in town, and that no roads were paved in Halifax County.

At the age of eight, Headspeth started working with his uncle in the newspaper business. Headspeth remembers the paper office being filled with activity and visitors, mainly veterans visiting his grandfather.

“Most days were spent entertaining, and evenings were spent working,” he recalls.

The South Boston News was at first set in foundry type and in later years in a Linotype Junior, which Headspeth remembers as being similar to a standard linotype, except the mats moved along wires of different lengths, instead of down channels as on later models.

The paper was then printed on a handfed Chandler & Price press. The circulation was 1,000 copies per week. At that time, paper was delivered in bundles of 1,000, and Headspeth’s uncle “did not want to open a second bundle.” A one-year subscription to the paper cost one dollar; Civil War veterans were charged 50 cents.

Headspeth says that when he worked at the South Boston News, the newspaper would not print gossip or crimes involving prominent people “because everyone knew anyway.”

After working on the family paper for some years, Headspeth “could pretty much run the place.” At this time, most newspapers were run by men who could do the whole job, from picking up the mail in the morning to writing a story, setting the type, printing the job and delivering it. Those who could afford it hired a pressman to print. As a printer, Headspeth initially made $25 a week.